The saying “All roads lead to Rome”, could for this week be changed to “All communication roads lead to Barcelona.” The big names in mobility are there; Ericsson, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, Motorola, Broadcom, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE Corporation and Huawei and more, but also IT heavy weights such as Google’s Eric Schmidt, Paul Otellini from Intel and Cisco’s John Chanmbers. The line between IT and mobility feels like they are officially gone. More and more users choose mobile devices to access the Internet, so it is not surprising that so many choose to visit this gigantic event.

Most interesting was probably this week’s announcement that Nokia partners up with Microsoft to use Windows Phone for their smartphones. This new strategy leaves a lot of questions, and the Nokia stock declined when the news became official. Nokia also negotiated with Google, but in the end they choose to work with Microsoft. This direction is not surprising since the world’s largest mobile phone supplier would have effectively created a duopoly with Apple iOS, if they had chosen Android over Microsoft. Microsoft has other challenges as well. Their efforts to claim the mobile device has not been as successful as many anticipated. The partnership with Nokia is really their chance. I am sure the two companies will work day and night to produce new phones. When Stephen Elop (former executive at Microsoft) president and chief executive officer of Nokia Corporation held a press conference after the Microsoft announcement he was confident, but made clear that they have a long way to go before this cooperation shows any results.

When Steve Balmer of Microsoft held his key-note he said that they will release two major updates to Windows Phone and make it possible to run Internet Explorer 9 on their phones. By using a hardware accelerant it will be possible to play h.264 encoded clips in the browser and get the same performance as running an application natively on the phone.

Ericsson announced a concept that will allow mobile operators to offer a cloud-pc together with Akamai. Ericsson explained that their vision is that our world is completely connected via wireless networks where everything is tied together using machine-to-machine technology. Hans Vestberg said that Ericsson will be the leading provider to the networked society. Ericsson is strong in mobility and broadband solutions, now they are investing in the third area, the cloud. Their service consists of a thin computer with a special version of Linux. Their servers use virtualization, network and security technology and was demonstrated running Microsoft Excel from a server in India via High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), high-speed 3G data services provided by cellular carriers worldwide that use the GSM technology.

But MWC is also about gadgets.

• Android is one of the big players where Google in only a few years have created a dominant position. MWC presented far more Android devices than any other.
• Motorola is back in the game again with new devises.
• Chinese company ZTE presented a number of 4G pad devices and thus trying to enter into the premium segment.
• Sony-Ericsson presented new devices before the show started. But for enterprise customers the business mobile Xperia Pro with built in support for device management, Microsoft Office document editing, and native Microsoft Exchange connector, a well-spaced QWERTY keyboard that slides out and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
• Samsung presented a new Galaxy S II with larger screen, thinner casing, full HD, 8M pixel camera and voice control. They also demonstrated a new Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 10.1 inch screen. But their strategic alliance with Adobe, Cisco and Sybase is even more interesting for enterprise customers and will be interesting to see what they will achieve together.
• HTC presented five new devises, among them HTC Scribe which allows the user to write with a pen directly on the screen.
• LG presented mobile phones and Pads that could show 3D without special glasses. This is a feature from their TV side.

So, what was missing? Or should I say who was missing? Apple.
As usual they are not participating in the Barcelona event. But the spirit of Apple does hoover the show. The rumors of new versions for Ipad and Iphone, what they will include keep flourishing.

But hey, who doesn’t love a mystery?

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Jason Andersson
1 Comment »

Since Unified Communications applications and technology include mobility, it’s important to keep abreast of trends that can impact your current or future use of mobile UC applications.   I attended  Mobile Enterprise Magazine’s Executive Summit earlier this month (see www.mobileenterprisemag.com).   During the conference, several important trends were discussed.  Each of the trends highlighted in this posting pose significant management challenges:

1.       In the world of 4G, devices will have short shelf-lives, as short as 6 months.  For companies which can take much longer to test new, develop/customize and deploy mobile devices and applications, this is extremely unwelcome news.  If a new device has a considerably shorter shelf life than your processes are able to support, how will this impact your company’s device, applications deployment and customer support plans?  What will you allow/disallow as far as integration into UC applications, and how will you decide?  What could rapid device turnover do to your budget?  For mission-critical applications, will you seek out solutions that bundle the price of equipment into the service contract?  Will your company seek to reduce possible risk by using cloud-based services, or managed services that bundle the mobile device into the service contract?   Will you implement mobility device management solutions to better track your company’s mobile assets? 

2.       One of the big concerns facing customers is the 4G pricing model.  Carriers like Verizon Wireless have made it plain they expect 4G will provide more revenue (ARPU) than 3G did.  It’s just not yet clear how additional revenue will be extracted from customers.  Thus it’s not too soon to consider how you’ll ensure that the applications your company relies upon make the best use of mobile networks as possible – that they aren’t overly chatty or are bandwidth hogs.  How could this more expensive reality affect your planned use of key UC features like Presence (which is constantly updated) or applications that rely on Location (something else that can require many updates)?  What does this imply for your choice of devices or O/S?  RIM was designed to use bandwidth sparingly, while by comparison, the iPhone can be a bandwidth bandit, and the Android can be an absolute hog (remember, it’s a cloud-based O/S). 

3.       For general business applications, some prognosticators think IL devices will supplant CL devices.  In fact, in many businesses today, there are more employees who expense all or apportion of their mobile services fees (IL) than there are employees who use direct-company contracted and paid mobile devices and services (CL).  IL devices are simpler to administer than CL devices.  IL devices are a financial expense, CL devices are a corporate asset. I think one of the biggest drivers toward IL is employee device choice- in theory, an employee could use any smartphone.  But I think in reality this could be quite limited – because as discussed below, the hard facts (and associated expense) of application and device support do not go away in an IL world.  Regardless, special-purposes devices will remain CL devices for the forseeable future.   But for companies to successfully standardize on an IL framework, they’ll need to consider the following:

a.       Policy.  These issues don’t go away by moving to IL.  If employees use smartphones, major policies must still be decided, because IL devices become, in effect, corporate assets.  For instance, what applications and data are various types of employees privy to?  How much will each class of employee be reimbursed?

b.      Distribution.  In this world, should your company allow any and all smartphones?  I think a number of companies will limit choice even in an IL world – to specific devices and/or O/Ss that can support company policies, or that internal processes and personnel are trained to support (or alternatively, that are supported by external specialists).    See my next point.

c.       Application performance.  As discussed briefly in the 4G pricing section, not all device operating systems are optimally suited to day’s wireless world.  That’s likely to continue into the future-especially since many 4G users will be using both 4G and 3G services for the next several years.  We already know that different devices that use the same application can deliver a different user experience.  As discussed, they consume bandwidth in different ways, and at different rates.  Even if your company doesnot reimburse an employee for data services, how will you answer employee questions, and educate employees about these issues?

d.      Enforcement.  How will security policies be enforced, how will data be destroyed in the event the device is lost or stolen, or the employee leaves the company?

In short, given the likely evolution of services and devices in the U.S., I understand why some people conclude that a consumer-like (IL) model will dominate the business environment.  In theory, it removes the expense of the short device shelf-life from a company’s shoulders, and it can allow for greater freedom of device choice.  But many significant tradeoffs and management challenges remain, so I’m not convinced that our industry has yet identified an optimal solution. The good news is that there is time for better alternatives to come along.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Lisa Pierce
1 Comment »

A new report from mobility expert, Tomi Ahonen,  shows that SMS has already become the most widely used text messaging application by all users in the world (53%), and even more by mobile users (78%). This reflects a shift from “real-time” voice calls that may run into “unavailability” problems and go to “voicemail jail”, to more practical “near real-time,” immediate message notification and delivery that another study reports will usually be responded to within five minutes.

A 2009 study by Lightspeed Research in the UK showed that 11% of mobile users didn’t initiate any voice calls at all,  while in the U.S., the percentage was even higher, 13%.

I am sure you are all familiar with seeing a user with a ringing cell phone often just looking to see who it is from then simply letting it go to a messaging function. Lately, voicemail-to-text services have taken care of caller voice messages by transcribing them automatically to text messages. So, whether the contact initiator chooses to use voice or not, the contact recipient can still deal with voice messages more efficiently than with voice mail interfaces.

From a UC perspective, where I include “process-to-person” contacts in addition to “person-to-person” contacts, text messaging and SMS are an obvious choice for personalized, pro-active, automated, time-sensitive notifications from a business process application, commonly referred to as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), because business applications don’t really want to generate voice messages instead of their usual text message output.  (If the recipient requires a speech interface because they are driving a car, we can let them selectively exploit “unified messaging’  options based on their presence status.

With the rapid growth of screen-based, multi-modal smart-phones, the flexibility of input and output can be extended to end users independently of whether they are contact initiators or recipients/respondents for SMS. In addition, however, with the power of UC and presence, SMS exchanges can be easily escalated to real-time Instant Messaging and/or “click-to call” voice connections when appropriate.  This makes conversational voice calls more manageable from both a caller’s and callee’s perspective, and reduces the unnecessary problems generated by “blind” call attempts and voicemail’s retrieval limitations.

Needless to say, SMS itself doesn’t satisfy all the informational needs of users involved in a business process, but provides an efficient,  timely, mobile contact interaction to people wherever they are, along with links to the real information required for the business process, e.g., email. However, SMS is used 2.6 times more than email by mobile users. The key to efficient information exchange is to make timely and efficient contact first, not have conversations or deliver documents. Clearly, UC will be successful with its different forms of communication applications,  if it can exploit mobility for accessing individual recipients as quickly and flexibly as possible.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
No Comments »

At VoiceCon last week, it was clear that the economy had hit the show.  Attendance was light, booths were even lighter, and the word was that most enterprises were holding off on big IT projects until Q1-09.  From a vendor perspective, they felt VoiceCon Spring was a more important show.  This is definitely a sign that vendors are being cautious about where they put their marketing dollars. 

The conference overall, took a turn in terms of the hype around it. It was quieter than usual, and I realized that the hype has died down.   UC is no longer a question of if it will happen, but more of when and how it will happen.  Vendors at the show focused more on features and functionality of UC solutions, really getting down to what the actual solution consists of.  Many also pointed out partnerships that will enhance their solutions, as is in the case of NEC and Tellme, where NEC will be combining its services with Tellme’s on-demand platform.  Several topics that I didn’t see however, or wish there were more of were: 

Green IT-GREEN is a big initiative for the president-elect, and I would not dismiss being “green” as a core part of UC’s value proposition.  Enterprises today have either included, or are including green initiatives into their business strategy, in part because of corporate social responsibility, in part for the more obvious, which is the cost savings behind being “green”.  Unified communications brings together groups of global talent at the click of a button, making go-to-market timing much more efficient; the reduction of travel not only helps the air pollution, but also an enterprise’s bottom line; less hardware (servers, wiring closets, etc) means less real estate; relationship building with external partners through unified communications, improves customer satisfaction; and ultimately, when we see communications increasingly embedded into business processes, automation of those processes, which in turn, will help enterprises to reallocate resources towards other business initiatives.  I would also include in this section, offering services in the cloud, which is still very much a nascent market, but not one to be overlooked. 

Mobility-Although VoiceCon has historically not been a wireless show, I firmly believe that the lines between wired and wireless are blurring.  Unified communications is tearing down this wall, but did not see much focus around mobility.  As was evident during Microsoft’s keynote when they introduced their customer, the “convergence” manager from Boeing, leading enterprises understand that the worlds of wired and wireless have come together. I did receive an interesting demo from Mitel, which has understood that the key for mobile UC will be the GUI, and they have opted to mirror the GUI for each supported device (i.e. BB with their own interface, etc).  Many vendors have strong mobile UC stories; however, I didn’t find them prevalent at this show.

Collaboration-Although unified communications is still not widely deployed, and I don’t expect it to evolve to a more comprehensive collaboration strategy within enterprises any time soon, there has been growing interest in what the next step for unified communication is. Collaboration is the long-term evolution of UC, and the umbrella under which UC falls. I look at collaboration as being unified communications+wikis, blogs, communities+enterprise social networking.  While we’re certainly not there yet, it would be great for enterprises, both big and small, to see what the evolution of UC is and have a better understanding of how they all fit with one another. 

So, while it was good to see all the usual suspects attending this event, this industry is changing, and VoiceCon must evolve.  It really is not just about voice anymore, but so much more, of which voice is a small part of. The roles within an IT organization are changing, and targeting the “network” guy or the “telecom” guy is no longer the case. The coming together of IT and telecom is happening and addressing one and not the other is detrimental.  I have seen titles like IT manager evolve into convergence manager and titles such as Chief Information Officer turn into Chief Innovation Officer.  What do you call them?  The telecom guy? The IT guy?  I think I’ve made my point.

For enterprises, it’s critical that a long-term collaboration strategy is put in place.  Although the economy has put many IT initiatives on hold, UC and collaboration should be priorities.  The long- and short-term benefits are well worth it and employees need to begin taking advantage of these tools. Organizational behavior starts from the top, and management must implement policies that will encourage the use of UC and collaboration tools. Cisco has been a vendor that has demonstrated that they practice what they preach.  With a mandate from the top to cut 1 billion dollars in CAPEX/OPEX, the use of these tools is critical to making that happen. Conducting business doesn’t stop just because you can’t get on an airplane.  It’s critical that the necessary tools be put in place as to not disrupt business.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Vanessa Alvarez
3 Comments »

Here is an excellent article about the “smartphone” becoming your next computer.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605369

I might rephrase the title to something like “Is The Mobile Handheld Computer Going To Become Your Next ‘Smartphone’? From a UC perspective, you are damn right it will!

As I pointed out in my last post about Citrix and it’s new policy of “BYOC” (Bring Your Own Computer) for its employees, the big hangup for enterprise mobility has been security and device support. Mobility is where the flexibility of UC really pays off most, much more so than at a desktop. So, as I see it, the security concerns for mobile devices can be relieved by “virtualizing” enterprise applications, just like they are starting to do for desktop use. The hosted application servers control access to sensitive information, in a hosted and secure network service environment but where the enterprise can still manage usage and access. That is where the new network infrastuctures of SOA and SaaS are taking business process applications, so we need to include wireless mobility and UC flexibility into that mix as well.

You should keep an eye on the posts of my colleague, Michael Finneran, about mobile devices and whether these should store business applications and data like a desktop computer, or just be a “terminal.” My opinion? The handheld or portable laptop device should always be at least a mobile “terminal.” If you really need to have reliable access, find a wired connection! Otherwise, use any available wireless access. If you have to do real “work,” and want to carry information with you, you will probably want a more efficient bigger screen and a keyboard, so carry a laptop (and your “smartphone” and find a place to dock and sit down!

Of course, we still need the wireless carriers to be more cooperative with consumers, who are also business users, that need mobile access to and from enterprise applications, exploiting Communication Enabled Business Process (CEBP) and self-service portals. That same need will apply to any consumer who is a “customer” of an enterprise business. But, that’s another debate that isn’t finished.

The big issue that is really shaping up is who will supply those “smartphone” devices, mobile operating systems, and mobile software clients to subscribers of wireless services, and how will enterprise organizations be able to exploit and control those devices in terms of access to proprietary business information by authorized business users. The battle for control is just starting!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
2 Comments »

The recent UC Summit that was organized by UC Strategies was highlighted by defining productivity benefits at two different levels. One was for the individual end user who gained personal time-savings and convenience from UC technologies (UC-U), the other was the performance efficiency of a business process in terms of both quality and speed of process completion (UC-B). Some of this was described in the eBook, Unified Communication Cutting Through the Hype, that I and my UC Strategies colleagues published earlier this year.

While both perspectives are valid and important, there is a gap between the two. Because most business processes involve more than one person, it becomes critical to business process performance that all the individuals who are involved in the process (work flow) do so as efficiently as possible. That means that they must be able to communicate as quickly and flexibly as possible, either as as contact initiators or contact recipients/respondents, so that there is no unnecessary delay in the process as a whole. If a key decision maker or action taker should be delayed in communicating, the whole process will consequently suffer a delay. So the impact of personal productivity (UC-U) can also impact (UC-B).

I recognized this years ago when first looking at the need for UC. I suggested that UC-B performance must take into account the performance of individual users who can cause such delays to the performance of the “group” as a whole, especially in time-critical situations. Having alternative resources to fill the human availability gap is a typical business strategy that has long been used in call centers, for example, to handle real-time phone calls. However, whenever there is a requirement for specific individual, then such an individual has to maximize their communication accessibility through UC flexibility for the benefit of the group and the business process.

“Group productivity” or “UC-G” can be described as the flexible accessibility to receive and respond to timely information and people contacts as quickly as possible. UC capabilities, coupled with mobile accessibility, will maximize UC-G for the user as well as the business process. For this reason, it will be important to identify specific users who are key to a high priority business process and insure that they are fully equipped to exploit the benefits of UC technologies. So, for example, doctors and nurses who must be notified that a patient is in a life-threatening state, cannot afford to be without mobile devices that allow them to be accessed by people and information wherever they are. Business situations have similar kinds of demands when there deadlines or costly problem situations that need to be fixed as quickly as possible to minimize losses.

UC flexibility has to extend beyond the business premises and include people outside the organization who are involved or affected by the situation. This means that premise-based UC alone will not be adequate when customers and business partners need to be involved in a time-sensitive business process. UC-G will therefore have to involve capabilities like “federated presence” in order to deal with such outside contacts as effectively as possible. Similarly, metrics to track communication efficiency with people inside or outside the organization will be useful in identifying UC needs that the organization doesn’t have direct control over, but which will still impact the organization’s business process performance.

What do you think? We welcome your comments.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
3 Comments »